Shared Nostalgia

It has officially been one week since the release of Hymn for the Tempest! I’ve received incredible feedback, thoughts, and encouragement. Thank you to you all for being on the journey with me these last 10 weeks, it was busy, trying, joyful, and stressful. Countless late nights, early mornings, ear fatigue, and tinkering with ideas. I’m proud of the piece and the work that went into it. This is just the beginning!

If you’ve been following since day one, you know that this piece (originally Project Storm) was inspired by the turbulent weather of the Great Lakes. Well, time for a little story of what inspired this piece…

My family has a cottage on Lake Michigan. It’s a place I grew up going to and have many fond memories of and now make new memories at with my own children. I have such vivid memories of watching storms move out over the lake. In one particular memory, I remember being around 9 or 10 years old and waking up in the middle of the night to watch countless flashes of lightning over the lake. What a sight! So powerful and unrelenting. I’ve seen tall waves crash and erode the beach. I’ve sat under our umbrella and experienced the torrential downpour. It’s in these experiences that my reverence for the power of nature was born.

On a recent trip with my own family, we experienced a waterspout over the lake for the first time (see picture above). Frankly, I was terrified. In over 30 years of going up there, I had never witnessed that. That night we were under a gale force wind warning, and I could barely sleep. The howling wind, the waves pounding, the threat of another tornado looming. However terrifying that was though, and still sometimes is, the chaos does indeed pass, and the sun does show again.

These memories inspired Hymn for the Tempest.

As you listen, I hope you experience a little bit of the nostalgia, the fear, the joy, and the reverence that I have experienced over these many years. Happy listening.

What should we write next?